Conrad Black: The true meaning of Vatican II

The true meaning of Vatican II

Following the request of my editor — not any compulsion to unburden myself of sectarian views — I am dedicating this column to the subject of the Second Vatican Council, which was opened by Pope John XXIII on Oct. 11, 1962, 50 years ago this week.

Vatican II, as it often is called, was just the second council of bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to take place in the Holy See — specifically, St. Peter’s Basilica. (Overall, however, it was the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church — previous councils having taken place at roughly the rate of one per century).

Vatican I, in 1871, was convened to emphasize that although the Holy See had lost its secular control over Rome and its surroundings to the newly unified Kingdom of Italy, it still possessed important authority in its proper domain, organized ecclesiastical attention to the human spirit. That council set out to buck up Pope Pius IX, who started out as something of a reformer, but was so discountenanced by Garibaldi’s followers invading what is now the Vatican City that he became a reactionary for the balance of his unprecedented 32-year pontificate.

The device settled upon in 1871 was the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility, which has been scandalously misrepresented ever since by critics of the Roman Catholic Church as meaning that if a pope capriciously declared that two plus two equals five, all those who are his ostensible followers would have to accept that, usually with a profound genuflection, the fervent mumbling of mantras in Latin or incomprehensible tongues and the veneration of the pontiff’s ring and other submissive acts. In fact, that Doctrine applies only to matters of profound theological importance that always have been agreed to by authoritative spokesmen for the Church.

It was a brilliant consolation prize for the Church’s leaders: Their spiritual authority was reaffirmed even if their secular authority was diminished (and the truth is that they had not been very enlightened rulers of the papal states; though it must also be said that Italy in general had, from the days of Romulus and Remus, been no model commonwealth).

Vatican I said: Let the scheming and squabbling dynasts and mere politicians of Italy (and they have not ceased to be a pretty job lot, from the house of Savoy to Mussolini to Berlusconi) frolic in their misused temporal authority. It matters not. The mighty Church of Rome, timeless and immutable as the ark of eternal truth, rises majestically above the intrigues and conspiracies swirling at the foot of its steps, impervious to the antics of secular strivers (something of a whitewash of the Church’s actual record).

After the lengthy and controversial reign of Pius XII, the 77-year-old Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, Patriarch of Venice, had been elected Pope John XXIII in 1958 on the theory that a man of his years would not cause too much drama. Roncalli was of humble origins, and had been widely admired for decades as a courageous Vatican diplomat and benign archbishop. He had, as nuncio to Turkey and Greece from 1935 to 1944, provided tens of thousands of visas to Jews fleeing the pogroms of the Third Reich to Palestine. Pius XII moved him in 1944 to Paris after de Gaulle had demanded the removal of the incumbent nuncio, Valerian Cardinal Valeri, for excessive coziness with the Nazi occupiers. Roncalli assiduously secured the retirement of several other bishops whom de Gaulle represented as unacceptably indulgent of the Nazis. So admired was he that when Roncalli was elevated to the cardinalate and named patriarch of Venice in 1953, French president Vincent Auriol invoked a rarely exercised privilege dating to the time of Louis XIV and in the Pope’s name and that of the secular republic to which he was accredited, conferred the honour on Roncalli in Notre Dame.

John XXIII announced the convening of a Vatican Council less than three months after his elevation, and it opened in 1962, after two years of preparation. He promised to “open the windows and let in fresh air.” Other Christians were invited to attend, and it opened 50 years ago this Thursday past, on Oct. 11, 1962. It had not proceeded far when John XXIII died, on June 3, 1963, and his successor, Paul VI, continued it.

The highlight of the sessions was a legendary polemical battle between liberal cardinal Joseph Frings, and the arch-conservative secretary of the Holy Office, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who replied with great vehemence, and whose microphone was finally cut off, as he fulminated apocalyptically. (Frings was advised on this occasion by his fellow German, the rising ecclesiastical intellectual, Professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.)

The Council continued for two more years and absolved Jews of any greater responsibility for the death of Christ than Christians; “sanctification and truth” were deemed to flourish outside the “visible confines” of Catholicism, i.e., among the “separated brethren” in other Christian religions and in Judaism; and other religions, though not evaluated, were referred to in general in respectful terms. The most widely appreciated change was the facilitation of the liturgy in the scores of national and local languages of the Church’s then nearly 600 million adherents, although the Latin texts remained the official version and the basis for any translation.

As usually happens with such efforts at reform, liturgical and dogmatic conservatives interpreted the proceedings as heresy and desecration — albeit heresy and desecration promulgated by the Pope and 80% of the bishops. To progressives, on the other hand, the reforms were dismissed as mere baby steps. To many of these latter critics, collegialization of authority under the bishops and the clergy as a whole, and ultimately congregationalism among the Church’s hundreds of thousands of individual parishes, should have followed; along with married, female, overtly homosexual and all other conceivable varieties of clergy; and liberalized views of contraception, and possibly even abortion. Such liberal reformers would replace almost everything in Church doctrine with homogenized precepts emphasizing wellness, feel-goodery and the golden rule.

It was 90 years between the first and second Vatican councils, and when the third one occurs, there will be some accommodation of the reality of contraception (which is not generally considered a confessable infraction anyway), and probably wider eligibility for the priesthood. But the supremacy of the pontiff will be retained; without it, the entire structure of the Roman Catholic Church and its status in the eyes of its believers as the bearer of eternal truth as imparted by God’s son, in spirit if not flesh, would disintegrate. Rome would finally conform to the wishful predictions of the legions of Rome’s enemies, that it is a giant bumble bee defying all laws of nature and logic, inexplicably delaying century after century, but finally having to succumb to the natural requirement that it fall down dead, inert in its superstitious scriptural antiquarianism.

That will not happen. Seekers of a congregational church will have to decamp, but other believers, whether spontaneously or from the fatigued exhaustion of atheism, will always be welcome.

To some extent, John XXIII was popular in the way that everyone loves Santa Claus, but more profoundly, his conscientious community with all who acknowledge spiritual values and forces made him beloved, and his Council remains important 50 years after the fact.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.